Footnotes:

  1. Sir Thomas Clifford, just then created Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, and appointed Lord High Treasurer, was one of the six ministers, the initials of whose names furnished the word Cabal, by which their junto was distinguished. He was the most virtuous and honest of the junto, but a Catholic; and, what was then synonymous, a warm advocate for arbitrary power. He is said to have won his promotion by advising the desperate measure of shutting the Exchequer in 1671, the hint of which he is said to have stolen from Shaftesbury. This piece may have been undertaken by his command; for, even at the very time of the triple alliance, he is reported to have said, "For all this, we must have another Dutch war." Upon the defection of Lord Shaftesbury from the court party, and the passing of the test act, Lord Clifford resigned his office, retired to the country, and died in September 1673, shortly after receiving this dedication.
  2. In this case, Dryden's praise, which did not always occur, survived the temporary occasion. Even in a little satirical effusion, he tells us,
  3. Clifford was fierce and brave.
  4. Clifford had been comptroller and treasurer of the household, and one of the commissioners of the treasury; he had served in the Dutch wars.
  5. Alluding to Lord Clifford's resignation of an office he could not hold without a change of religion.

PROLOGUE.

This poem was written as far back as 1662, and was then termed a Satire against the Dutch.

As needy gallants in the scriveners' hands,

Court the rich knave that gripes their mortgaged lands,

The first fat buck of all the season's sent,

And keeper takes no fee in compliment:

The dotage of some Englishmen is such